Hasta La Ideas

Renzo Piano Building Workshop has completed a monastery built into the side of a hill at the site of Le Corbusier’s chapel of Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp.

The monastery comprises twelve concrete living units for the resident community of Poor Clare nuns, plus communal areas, an oratory and a visitor’s lodge.

The living units are set into the hillside in small clusters and have their own individual winter gardens.

Piano has collaborated with landscape designer Michel Corajoud to ensure the buildings blend seamlessly with the surrounding environment and do not detract from Le Corbusier’s chapel.

The gatehouse is embedded in the slope of the hill and features a ticket office, shop, bioclimatic garden, meeting room and archive housed behind a glazed façade.

A palette of concrete, zinc and wood has been applied to the interior spaces to create a contemplative environment and link the buildings to their surroundings.

Photography is by Michel Denancé.

Here is some more information from the architects:

Renzo Piano Building Workshop

The Project

The scope of the project is to create a peaceful environment, whose quiet and discreet beauty highlights and complements the chapel, while at the same time enhancing existing facilities for visitors’ reception. Immersed in the lush vegetation of the Bourlemont hill, the monastery is a place “of silence, prayer, peace and joy”, where everything contributes to spiritual contemplation.

The project includes three main items: the gatehouse, the nunnery, and the landscape.

The Gatehouse

In order to enhance the existing visitors’ facilities, the original gatehouse has been replaced with a new more functional building that houses a ticket office, corner shop, bioclimatic garden and a meeting room, along with administrative spaces. Part of the building is also dedicated to the research and conservation of the archives.

Cut into the slope of the hill the new gatehouse merges within the surrounding landscape. It features a large glazed façade that opens to the visitors arrival area and parking.

The Monastery

The monastery is composed of twelve domestic units for the sisters with spaces for common living (refectory and workshops), an oratory for religious pilgrims, and a lodge to host visitors in search of quiet and spiritual rest.

The rooms are small independent concrete units that are set into the hillside (2,70m x 2,70m). They are positioned in clusters that gently slope down the west side of the hill offering a cleared view of the valley thereby establishing a relationship with the community.  Simple and spare, they are each given an individual winter garden, a space entirely dedicated to contemplation.

The oratory is conceived as part of the monastery. Positioned off the chapel’s site, it is embedded into the slope of the hill, creating a harmonious space with the chapel and the site. The oratory aims at being a place of communion open to pilgrims of all communities.

The building palette for the complex is simple: concrete, zinc, and wood to create an environment propitious to meditation.

The following photos, sketches and plans are all copyright Renzo Piano Building Workshop.

The environment

Nature also plays a fundamental role in the project, highlighting the sacred and remote aspect of the site.

Preservation of the existing vegetation and forestation of the slopes helps create a sense of unity and sacredness throughout the design.

The project has been conceived taking into consideration all environmental procedures possible to reduce energy consumption.

The Chapel at Ronchamp

The Chapel of Notre-Dame du Haut (Our Lady of the Height) overlooks the small town of Ronchamp from the hill of Bourlémont. It was built by one of the twentieth century’s most famous architects, Le Corbusier.

Marian pilgrimage place centuries, it opens to the four horizons as a space ‘of silence, of prayer, of peace; of inward joy’ in the words of the architect Le Corbusier.

Site history

Since the middle ages, the 8th of September, day of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, the Chapel welcomes pilgrims ; the chapel belonged to the Church as property of the parish of Ronchamp. During the French Revolution in 1789 it was sold as a property of the state to a merchant.

A few years later, about forty families and Ronchamp‟s priest decided to buy the edifice back in order to restore it to its initial function: a chapel dedicated to the cult of the Virgin Mary, and also a pilgrimage site to which the local people were still very attached.

Thus, an almost unique and exceptional, the Chapel became private property, although of all of these families. Today, the heirs form the Association based on the law 1901, with regard to ownership of the site, the buildings and the image of the Chapel, in accordance with Le Corbusier’s written will.

The construction of Le Corbusier

During the liberation of Ronchamp in October 1944, the edifice was partially destroyed by artillery. The Besançon-based Diocesian Commission for Sacred Art („Commission diocésaine d‟Art Sacré‟ – „CDAS‟) it proposes to Le Corbusier’s reconstruction; Le Corbusier hesitate then affected by the site (its landscape, its human history and the fervor of its inhabitants) it undertakes to rebuild a building with the stones of the old chapel and a cloak of white-washed reinforced-concrete. “Notre-Dame du Haut” out of the ground in 1955.

“Ronchamp Tomorrow” project

Launched at the fiftieth anniversary of the Chapel in 2005, a refection on the future of the site has identified the need to support more visitors to the site.

Click above for larger image

Silence, peace found again and getting back to nature are at the heart of the “Ronchamp Tomorrow” project. Three complementary construction sites have been launched with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop together with the landscape designer Michel Corajoud, to allow visitors to the chapel of Notre-Dame du Haut, both pilgrims and lovers of architecture, to find on the site the serenity they need to take in to the fullest the work of Le Corbusier.

Click above for larger image

The Chapel’s Gatehouse

As a replacement to the current reception building: Renzo Piano will build a new Gatehouse for visitors that is more balanced, spacious, open to culture, architecture and the sacred. It will also be the new headquarters of AONDH.

Click above for larger image

The convent for the Community of Poor Clares

This will consist of small living and work units for a community of a dozen international Poor Clares on the backside of the site; an oratory, and a place to stay, a spiritual retreat, will be open to all. Renzo Piano will bring the ensemble to life in a discrete way.

Click above for larger image

The landscape

The hill has been taken care of for more than 50 years but the trees today need to be treated, some replanted; the landscape architect Michel Corajoud plans replanting, remodelling some of the landscape spaces and a landscaped parking area, employing the standards of sustainable development and in the respect the environment.

See also:

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Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc	Martin Luther Church by Coop Himmelb(l)au	Chapel of the Assumption Interior by John Doe

Austrian design studio LAAC Architekten and Stiefel Kramer Architecture have completed this public plaza in Innsbruck, Austria, with an undulating concrete surface.

Completed in collaboration with Christopher Grüner, The Landhausplatz square retains the site’s four monuments with the addition of new trees, benches, lighting, a fountain and drinking fountains.

The huge concrete slabs swell upwards to frame these elements, with textured surfaces giving way to a smooth polished surface.

Water is allowed to drain away through the gaps between the slabs and is absorbed on site.

More landscape architecture on Dezeen »

Photography is by Günter Richard Wett.

Here are some more details from the architects:

New Design for Eduard-Wallnöfer-Platz
(Landhausplatz) in Innsbruck, Tyrol, 2011

Project Description

Goal of the intervention at Eduard-Wallnöfer-Platz (Landhausplatz) was to create a contemporary urban public space that negotiates between the various contradictory conditions and constraints of the site and establishes a stage for a new mélange of urban activities characterised by a wide range of diversity. The realised project consists of a 9.000 square meter concrete floor sculpture.

Eduard-Wallnöfer-Platz was the largest but neglected public square in the centre of the city of Innsbruck in Tyrol, Austria. The site nevertheless kept a symbolic significance with the four memorials positioned there. A subterranean garage was built in 1985.

Before the transformation took place, the square’s atmosphere and spatial appearance was dominated by the facing facade of the Tyrolean provincial governmental building from the period of National Socialism, and by a large scale memorial that looks like a fascist monument – which in fact and in spite of its visual appearance is a freedom monument that shall commemorate the resistance against, and the liberation from National Socialism. The intervention aims to compensate for existing misconceptions and to reinforce the monument’s historical significance. The new topography of the square offers a contemporary and transformative base for the memorials and makes them accessible – physically and regarding a new perception.

The new topography sets a landscape-like counterpart to the surrounding. But it turns into an urban sculpture through its city context, its finish in concrete and trough its function. Accessibility and the layout of paths result from the modulation of the surface which deals with spatial constraints, functional requirements and with morphological considerations.

Pedestrians and users as well as the memorials in their role as protagonists on this new city stage allow for an operative public and open forum between main station and old town. The bright surface of the square functions as a three-dimensional projection field on which the protagonists together with the trees cause a high-contrast dynamic play of light and shadow during daytime. In front of this background the seasons are staged powerfully. Indirect light reflected from the floor sculpture directs the scenery at nighttimes.

In the northern part of the square, the spacious flat area in front of the Landhaus is conceived as a generous multi-purpose event space providing the according infrastructure. A large scale fountain activates the expanded field and provides cooling-down in summertime.

South of the liberation monument the topography features a variety of spatial situations for manifold utilisations. The texture of the concrete surface varies according the type of geometrical configuration. Beneath many trees the floor continuously merges into seat accommodations with a terrazzo-like polished finish.

The sculpture group of one of the monuments is integrated into the basin of a new fountain where water runs down steps cut into a slope. The shoal fountain and the water games in front of the Landhaus provide playground for children and cool down the climate in summer locally. There are drinking fountains in different heights for children and adults.

The surface of the square is realised in modulated slabs out of in-situ concrete, joined by bolts that deal with shearing forces. Infrastructural elements for the organisation of events which can take place anywhere on the square are integrated in the construction of slab-fields of max. 100 square meter. Drainage of the whole square including the fountains is located completely at the open joints between the individual fields so that there is no drainage pit visible on the whole site. An innovative buffer system allows that – despite of the existence of a subterranean garage – all the appearing surface water drains away within the property.

Architects:
LAAC Architects/stiefel kramer architecture
in cooperation with Christopher Grüner

LAAC Architects – Innsbruck
stiefel kramer architecture – Vienna/Zurich
Christopher Grüner – Innsbruck

See also:

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Miami Beach by West 8	Grand Canal Square by Martha Schwartz Partners	CDSea by Bruce Munro

This illuminated, webbed steel structure at the 2011 Xi’an International Horticultural Expo in China is the second project to be featured on Dezeen this week by London architects Plasma Studio.

The structure is named the The Guangyun Entrance, as it frames the main visitor entrance to the expo site.

It is anticipated that climbing plants will grow over the trellis frame and create a green roof.

See all of our stories about the 2011 Xi’an Expo on Dezeen »
More projects by Plasma Studio on Dezeen »

The following details are from the architects:

The Guangyun Entrance

The Guangyun Entrance operates as infrastructure and fulfils the role of bridging the main road that dissects the site. It channels visitors from the plaza at the entrance where they congregate and orient themselves, plotting their direction. Their path over the bridge rises 7m and offers vantage points to gain an overview of the different zones of the Expo displayed ahead.
Bridge design often has two lanes: one for incoming and another for outgoing traffic. However in this case, the flows are uneven and change throughout the day.

With inspiration taken from rush hour escalator traffic in the London Underground stations, the bridge has been devised with three lanes, so the middle lane can switch direction from incoming in the morning to outgoing later in the day.
 These three bands read as interwoven braids, and together with a surrounding trellis roofed structure, they give the appearance of bands of landscape peeling off and rejoining the mass at the end of the journey. Between the three bands are green areas and a water feature for visitors to stop, rest and enjoy the view.

Above, an open trellis steel structure forms the shading device that is intended to become naturally overgrown with climbing plants, thus forming a green roof, and suggests the theme of the Expo to distant onlookers.
The lightweight roof has been developed together with Arup engineers as an innovative integral structure that appears as beams seemingly free-floating in space.

The Guangyun Entrance has been conceived as a landbridge with a tensegrity trellice structure that will gradually become overgrown by greenery.

International Competition: 1. Prize, 2009
Project: 2009-2011
Opening: April 28th 2011
Completion: March 2011
Client: Chan-Ba Ecological District
Architecture: Plasma Studio, BIAD
Landscape Design: GroundLab, LAUR Studio, Beijing Forestry
University 
Engineers: John Martin and Associates, Arup

See also:

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The Creativity Pavilion by Plasma Studio	Hotel by Plasma Studio	Tetris Haus by Plasma Studio

Here are some photos of the Miami Beach SoundScape park by Dutch landscape architects West 8, located next to Frank Gehry‘s New World Centre (see our earlier story) in Miami Beach, Florida.

The Miami Beach Soundscape/Lincoln Park is littered with palm trees, pergolas and a meandering mosaic path, while an array of white aluminium wireframe structures mark the entry points of the park.

The landscape forms part of the New World Symphony campus and the orchestral academy will extend its program to the park with sound, theatre and video installations.

Video art and concerts will be projected onto a wall of the New World Centre, providing the park with a giant outdoor screen.

More landscape architecture on Dezeen »

Here’s some more information from West 8:

Miami Beach SoundScape / Lincoln Park – Miami Beach, USA

Grand opening West 8 and Frank Gehry in Miami Beach

On January 25 Miami Beach Soundscape / Lincoln Park, designed by Dutch firm West 8 opens to the public. The park is part of the New World Symphony campus of Pritzker prize-winning architect Frank Gehry.

In 2009 West 8’s winning design for Lincoln Park was unanimously chosen by the Miami Beach Commission. The park is part of the New World Symphony Campus, which includes a concert hall and a conservatory where young talent coming to study and perform.
Lincoln Park is a new meeting place in town. Centrally located in the Art District at the monumental terminus of lively Lincoln Road, the park has multiple functions.

During the day the park is shaded by pergolas and palm trees. In the evening it is a cultural hotspot, one of the special attractions of the park being a video and sound installation – projecting concerts and video art on building’s 700m2 wall, which serves as an outdoor screen for the park. The park is an urban garden that expresses the euphoria of Miami, and will be actively programmed for public and cultural events.

The Lincoln Park site is a small – slightly larger than 1 hectare in size – urban site located at Washington Avenue and 17th Street in South Florida that strives to establish a new precedent for parks in the City of Miami Beach. While an urban park this size might often receive a design that has more hard surface than soft, Lincoln Park’s site-specific conditions, context and program elicited a unique response. A decision was made early in the design process for this public space to feel ‘green’ and more like a park.

With West 8 firmly positioned to deliver its mission of a green park, not a plaza, a park that feels intimate, shady, and soft was created; a park that will support the world-class attraction of the New World Symphony Building. Lincoln Park reflects the spirit and vitality of Miami Beach and will support a multitude of day and night uses, either under the shade of the trees or a starlit sky.

Lincoln Park will also have the wonder of some totally unique features that are one of a kind. First, several pergolas embrace the park edges; their shape inspired by the puffy cumulous clouds inherent in South Florida’s tropical climate. The hand-fabricated painted aluminium structures not only provide shade but will support the spectacular blooms of bougainvillea vines; highlighting a threshold of colour at the parks points of entry.

High quality artwork is equally important here, and the projection wall of the adjacent Symphony Hall building is an ideal ‘canvas’ for video projection artists – an emerging and exciting discipline within the art world. West 8 has designed a projection tower and ‘Ballet Bar’ to house the extensive multimedia equipment provided within the park. These elements provide a consistent language among the park’s unique architectural elements, providing a wide range number of possibilities for both local and international artists to present an ever-changing exhibit that would occur outside the confines of a traditional museum experience.

Soft, undulating topography is reinforced visually by a white concrete mosaic of meandering pathways, and white concrete seating walls that providing options for informal seating. These two critical elements of the park design allow Lincoln Park to convey the illusion of a park larger than its humble inherent size. ‘Veils’ of palm and specimen tree planting conceal and reveal views further reinforcing the experience of being within an oasis that is much larger.

Open to the public in January 2011, Lincoln Park is a unified expression of recreation, pleasure and culture. Combined with the momentum of the symphony halls uses and outstanding architecture, the New World Symphony campus will be a world class destination that marries music, design, and experience.

client: City of Miami Beach
design: 2009–2010
realisation: 2010-2011
size: 1 ha.

See also:

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New World Centre by Frank Gehry	BGU University Entrance Square by Chyutin Architects	Nursing Home Garden by Estudio Caballero Colón